iOS 6: Is Apple loosening up?

Apple announced a new Safari “feature” in iOS 6 last night that made me grin.

And when you’re posting a photo or video to eBay, Craigslist, or another site, you can take photos and video — or choose from your Camera Roll — without leaving Safari.

If you’re a web developer, you might have noticed that it wasn’t possible to allow iOS Safari users to upload a picture or video to your website using the standard HTML file input type (input type=”file”). It made sense because iOS doesn’t really have a user-facing file system and traditional file concepts.

In the past you could be enterprising and deploy some workarounds, but the solutions were hardly frictionless and it would often lead developers to explore the possibility of building a native iOS app — ushering developers inside Apple’s walled garden, away from the open web.

With the announcement last night, Apple has made provision for image and video files to be uploaded directly to websites.

Why? Good question. There’s this theory that Apple is loosening up.

It started with Siri. Siri was uncharacteristically beta for a company with such polished poise.

Then there was the third generation Apple TV interface. A former Apple TV engineer revealed that the latest UI was vetoed by the late Steve Jobs, yet Apple still allowed it to be pushed out.

In an unprecedented move, Apple also traded the strict control of a press event for more intimate settings with select writers to reveal details about Mountain Lion, a major update to OS X. Said prolific columnist John Gruber of his experience: “I’ve never been at a meeting like this, and I’ve never heard of Apple seeding writers with an as-yet-unannounced major update to an operating system. Apple is not exactly known for sharing details of as-yet-unannounced products, even if only just one week in advance. Why not hold an event to announce Mountain Lion — or make the announcement on apple.com before talking to us?”

Senior vice president of product marketing at Apple Phil Schiller told to Gruber that Apple was doing some things differently now.